12 BEE-CULTURE. 
enterprise. When the subject shall be properly understood, especially 
when the lesson shall be effectually learned, which some have learned, 
that the Honey Bee can be domesticated or rendered manageable, as 
truly and almost as safely as any other creature which is made for the 
service of man, or as safely as the cow or the horse, Bee-culture will 
be greatly increased. Then it will be regarded in its true light as 
affording ample remuneration to those who enlist in it. The profits 
resulting from a judicious and proper system of Bee-culture may be 
safely estimated at from 100 to 500 per cent. per annum. In this 
statement I give merely the results of my own experience in Bee- 
keeping for a period of twelve years. There is no living creature 
which is subject to the control of man which paysso large a profit upon 
the capital invested and the time employed, as the Honey Bee, when a. 
proper system of Bee-culture is adopted. 
It is evident to every experienced apiarian that Bee-culture is carried 
on to a very limited extent in this country, compared with the facilities: 
which are afforded for its most successful prosecution. As he looks 
abroad on our cultivated fields, upon our hills and valleys extending 
from Mexico to Canada, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, something 
like a painful sensation comes over him as he is compelled to witness 
an entire loss of vast quantities of honey on every side, which, without 
injury to any one, might be gathered, if Bees in sufficient numbers were 
set at work under a proper and well regulated system of Bee-culture. 
Here he discovers a vast source of wealth, the smallest fractional part 
of which has scarcely been secured. This state of the case brings to his 
mind most forcibly the obstacles which operate to produce this result. 
CHAPTER’ Yr. 
OBSTACLES TO BEE-CULTURE. 
Tue first which I shall name is the want of adequate knowledge in 
reference to the peculiar habits and economy of the Honey Bee. 
It is not at all surprising that very little should be known relative to 
the nature and operations of Bees, when we consider the circumstances 
a 
